Originally posted by HoldenRT Thanks. It's hard to know from live timing what the fuel strategies are and if people need to pit again etc.

The leaders all pitted on laps 56-58 so they're fueled to the end. Tag's dropped off and Power's out on his own... If you click on each driver's name, you get a detailed breakdown of his race, including the number of pitstops and last one made.

ESPN/ABC sucks. During the last 5 minutes, they go to a commercial. Then when they come back, there is crazy action all over the track. So what do they do? They shrink the window down, put up Danica Patrick's mug, and the announcers ignore all of the on-track action for the last 5 minutes, and instead babble with Patrick, who has just got off the plane from Motegi. Not a peep as cars slice and dice through the corners and change position in the closing laps of the race. Instead we get the Danica colonel lingus show.

Oh, and DP-01s are noticeable quicker and more nimble than the IRL cars were in Saint Pete.

Originally posted by MattPete ESPN/ABC sucks. During the last 5 minutes, they go to a commercial. Then when they come back, there is crazy action all over the track. So what do they do? They shrink the window down, put up Danica Patrick's mug, and the announcers ignore all of the on-track action for the last 5 minutes, and instead babble with Patrick, who has just got off the plane from Motegi. Not a peep as cars slice and dice through the corners and change position in the closing laps of the race. Instead we get the Danica colonel lingus show.

I was pissed at the same. There was no need for DP at that stage of the race.They totaly lost the plot.

That and the coverage in general was pretty bad- almost no mention of anyone except Tagliani and Power (and Tracy, despite him being nowhere), hardly a word about the new guys who ran a fantastic race (Montagny, Perera, Bernoldi, et al) and a whole slew of inaccurate statements ("Perera was the Toyota F1 test driver last year"...that was Montagny, even if Perera was a Toyota development driver a couple years ago).

Originally posted by MattPete ESPN/ABC sucks. During the last 5 minutes, they go to a commercial. Then when they come back, there is crazy action all over the track. So what do they do? They shrink the window down, put up Danica Patrick's mug, and the announcers ignore all of the on-track action for the last 5 minutes, and instead babble with Patrick, who has just got off the plane from Motegi. Not a peep as cars slice and dice through the corners and change position in the closing laps of the race. Instead we get the Danica colonel lingus show.

Oh, and DP-01s are noticeable quicker and more nimble than the IRL cars were in Saint Pete.

Thanks. Somebody else with the same view as me. Thought I was a loner.... What a waste of 1/3 of my screen and 5 of the final 7 minutes of the race.

Oh good lord. Indycar.com lists Franck Perera as finishing both 2nd and 6th at Long Beach. Classy.

I think it's odd that they're listing everyone's points as zero if they aren't one of the ones that have crossed over yet. I lot of those guys will end up running the Indy500, so if they do are they going to retroactively give them their Long Beach points back? Weird.

I persevered with the pretty shitty radio broadcast (which had long gaps of silence after the commercials ended - weird/annoying) until Wilson went out then switched off as I was rooting only for Wilson. It doesn't sound like I missed much to be honest.

Champ Car went out in true recent Champ Car style though, with a whimper rather than a bang....

.. the only few bits that were interesting was some of the archive footage they showed throughout the race .... but it only served to make you miss the good old days up to the mid 90's even more !!! .....

.... oh yes and apparantly Will Power is a 'road racing legend' ..... according to his team owner ... boy the bar has been set so low !!!!

I thought the race was pretty good. Not great, but not terrible. A few great performances.

CART was a great series, and provided this fan a lot of pleasure for many years.

The coverage sucked. I had expected more on CART/Champcar's history, and the fact that this was last race of a formerlly great series.

I totally agree with:

>>ESPN/ABC sucks. During the last 5 minutes, they go to a commercial. Then when they come back, there is crazy action all over the track. So what do they do? They shrink the window down, put up Danica Patrick's mug, and the announcers ignore all of the on-track action for the last 5 minutes, and instead babble with Patrick, who has just got off the plane from Motegi. Not a peep as cars slice and dice through the corners and change position in the closing laps of the race. Instead we get the Danica colonel lingus show.

I had taped the race to watch again in some future year. Given the fact that they couldn't stop mentioning Danica's name every 10 minutes, and putting her on screen for the end, I might just tape over it.